The PS3 title features a macho-looking lady named Mute. She's a military leader and can beat you up. All of you.

The character will be voiced by Japanese voice actress Ikue Ohtani, who voices Pikachu. Yes, the lady who gets paid to say "pika pika" and "Pikachu" in as many different ways as she possibly can.

In this clip, the voice actress shows her skills to comedian Sanma Akashiya.

Two more fighters have been announced for the title: Curvy Cattleya and mountainous Melpha.

Queen's Blade is originally a Lost Worlds style "combat picture book game" and has been published in Japan for the last couple of years.

Queen's Blade features only female characters, and its spin-off series Queen's Gate has showcased the likes of Iroha (Samurai Shodow), Mai Shiranui (The King of Fighters) and Dizzy (Guilty Gear). Queen's Blade has also been spun off into an anime in Japan.

『クイーンズブレイド スパイラルカオス』美闘士屈指の巨乳キャラなど紹介 [Dengeki Online]

Titled Tales of Vesperia ~ The First Strike ~, the anime is being produced by Production I.G., the studio being Ghost in the Shell and the animated segment in Kill Bill Vol. I. Kenta Kamei will tackle directing duties, and veteran scribe Reiko Yoshida will pen the script.

Voice actors include Mamoru Miyano (who voiced Light in Death Note and Riku in Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts II) as Flynn Scifo, Mai Nakahara (who voiced Rena in Higurashi no Naku Koro ni and Nagisa in Clannad) as Estellise Sidos Heurassein, and Kosuke Toriumi (who voiced Junpei Iori in Persona 3) as Yuri Lowell.

Click through below to check out images of the anime as well as concept art which features an red-headed night that did not appear in the game (and Estelle in a wedding dress!). The anime is still "in development" so don't take these final images.

「テイルズ オブ ヴェスペリア」がPLAYSTATION 3で2009年秋に登場！　新キャラ"パティ"追加＆メインイベントはフルボイス化 [4Gamer]

This new title, which is for the PSP, is Tales of VS. It will be out this summer in Japan. The game is supposedly like Square Enix's DISSIDIA PSP title, complete with 3D battle scenes.

This confirms what we dug up last month: registered trademarks for Tales of Graces and Tales of VS..

PSP 『テイルズオブバーサス』、 2009 年夏発売 [Famitsu]

Dubbed Tales of Graces, the game is coming to the Wii this winter. Mutsumi Inomata is doing the character design. She's known for anime work on My-HIME and Future GPX Cyber Formula as well as working seven titles in the Tales of series.

The game's theme is "protection", and according to Namco, the battle system and system screens are different from pervious titles.

Namco Bandai's Tales of role-playing-game series started in 1995 with Tales of Phantasia.

This announcement confirms what we dug up last month: registered trademarks for Tales of Graces, among other titles.

Queen's Blade is originally a Lost Worlds style "combat picture book game" and has been published in Japan for the last couple of years. Queen's Blade features only female characters, and its spin-off series Queen's Gate has showcased the likes of Iroha (Samurai Shodow), Mai Shiranui (The King of Fighters) and Dizzy (Guilty Gear). Queen's Blade has also been spun off into an anime.

Pictured are cutscene images of the character's body armor been ravaged — among other things. And remember, that's only milk. We know this because we can see the milk bottle, and there's nothing wrong with milk. Nothing wrong with milk bottles, either.

美闘士たちがPSPで共闘 『クイーンズブレイド スパイラルカオス』 [Famitsu]

The company as a whole (remember, Bandai Namco do arcade machines, toys and cartoons) ended the quarter with a net income of ¥9,019,000,000 (USD$100 million), so on the off chance you're a shareholder, your money's still good.

More interesting to us are some global sales figures found towards the end of the company's earnings release. They show the following games shifted the following number of units:

Soul Calibur IV - 2.26 million copies
Dragon Ball Z Burst Limit - 730,000
WE SKI - 590,000
Gundam Musou 2 - 590,000
Active Life Outdoor Challenge - 550,000
Naruto: Ultimate Ninja 3 - 530,000
Super Robot Wars Z - 510,000
Taiko Drum Master for DS 2 - 500,000
Mobile Suit Gundam Gundam VS. Gundam - 440,000
Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 3 - 420,000

In what we're guessing is an attempt to glom on to the success of Capcom's Monster Hunter Portable series, CyberConnect and (we're presuming) publisher Namco Bandai will move the series from the PlayStation 2 to the still-popular handheld.

Characters from the original .hack series and .hack//G.U. will return in .hack//LINK, which is still without a firm date.

While the .hack series has made a point of simulating a multiplayer experience offline, we wouldn't be surprised if Namco Bandai looks to the Monster Hunter formula for inspiration on how the new episode will play.

Famitsu 20090116 [Wii @ Everyday]

Eschewing the "inverted pyramid" structure of newspaper journalism, right here at the top of this story I'm going to tell you that Bandai's Gundam could not be reached for comment.

Screenshots indicate that the "Tekken / Soul Calibur Lounge" will look eerily like a high class club pulsating with life inside your hopefully high-definition television, only they won't care if you're wearing sandals, or no shoes at all. The screenshots also indicate that there are plenty of chairs arranged around the club with obsessive-compulsive straightness. When the lounge opens, the ultra-sterile, cotton-swab-clean avatars of some fourteen dozen employees of Sony Computer Entertainment Japan will no doubt be working overtime to clog your television screen real estate with burbling chat bubbles indicating that you can open the menu and choose "sit" to sit down.

After sitting, you will be able to enjoy reading text bubbles in which Sony Computer Entertainment Japan employees inform other players that they can open their menu and choose "sit" to sit down. If you're super-special, the employee of Sony Computer Entertainment Japan who told you to sit down will say something "exciting", such as "it's so nice to be able to sit down". If he's had a bad day at work and/or maybe tied his tie too tight this morning, he might simply turn his back and see about ushering other players to seats.

If you decide to stand up and perform that jumping-jack-like dance in front of a piece of virtual Tekken or Soul Calibur art, chances are a Sony Computer Entertainment Japan employee pretending to be another PlayStation 3 owner "just like you" will walk up behind you and use literally 900 words to say "Hey there good sir; I find myself unable to fully appreciate this piece of art (COPYRIGHT BANDAI-NAMCO 1998); could you please move out of the way?"

Within the Bandai-Namco special lounge, players will also be able to line up at virtual arcade machines to play several Namco Museum classics that have also been available in the loading screens of original PlayStation games since around 1995.

Have you noticed? I'm being kind of mean! Full disclaimer: I find PlayStation Home terribly silly. Worse than that: I consider it about as hip as a virtual Scientologist convention. It would have been decent, I guess, if it'd been an unexpected extra on the PS3 at launch. As-is, I don't know, man. The moment they started giving me the quick-travel tutorial in my own "apartment", I started to get the chills. I always say, when my "Game Designer Sunglasses" are on, that if you feel compelled to put "fast travel" in your game, chances are your slow travel sucks.

"Home" isn't even a game, I know, though if you're going to incorporate one game-like element snatched from the pantheon of game design, why would you choose Oblivion's "fast travel" over, I don't know, Super Mario 64's jumping? Wouldn't Home be so much fun if you could jump? . . . Maybe?

Oh, also, they're apparently selling goods in the Japanese home now. Nippon Ichi has made several Disgaea-themed avatars available, and Namco is selling a Pac-Man T-shirt. The product description for the Pac-Man T-shirt is especially clever: "Pac-Man T-Shirt #1". There will be more! You will buy all of them, or you will not be a true fan! You will buy this shirt, you will put it on your avatar, and you will sit in the Namco lounge with your "Away from keyboard" message floating over your head twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week!

Did you know: Famitsu is more or less a mouthpiece for press releases. It is very seldom that the actual words written in their articles express anything less than turgid enthusiasm for the games on display. Usually, the articles are written by the game companies themselves. Even when the articles are written by Famitsu staff, said staff is usually "polite" enough to just say things like "Wow! We're excited!"

That said, it's looking at the caption beneath the photo of a downloadable Santa Claus suit, it's hard to imagine the author wasn't rolling his eyes at least internally:

"Sony Computer Entertainment will be making all kinds of Christmas-themed items available. Might PlayStation Home become jam-packed with Santa Clauses?"

Man, I hope so.

[via Famitsu Dot Com]

Those aren't Sony buttons! What's going on here?!

ボタンが360なのにｗｗｗ [Namidame.2ch]
PlayStation Japan (cache) [Official Site Thanks, muu!]

And yes, Haruhi dance after the jump.

Oh, and I haven't forgotten about the cosplay contest. That will go up shortly.

Here's my plane! It's made out of popsicle sticks! I included a nickel for scale! Cuz it's tiny! Exclamation Point!